IMPERATIVE MOOD.
Definition.
231. The imperative mood is the form of the verb used in direct commands, entreaties, or requests.
Usually second person.
232. The imperative is naturally used mostly with the second person, since commands are directed to a person addressed.
(1) Command.
Call up the shades of Demosthenes and Cicero to vouch for your words; point to their immortal works.—J. Q. Adams.
Honor all men; love all men; fear none.—Channing.
(2) Entreaty.
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements.
—Bryant.
"Hush! mother," whispered Kit. "Come along with me."—Dickens
Tell me, how was it you thought of coming here?—Id.
Sometimes with first person in the plural.
But the imperative may be used with the plural of the first person. Since the first person plural person is not really I + I, but I + you, or I + they, etc., we may use the imperative with we in a command, request, etc., to you implied in it. This is scarcely ever found outside of poetry.
Part we in friendship from your land,
And, noble earl, receive my hand.
—Scott.
Then seek we not their camp—for there
The silence dwells of my despair.
—Campbell.
Break we our watch up.
—Shakespeare.
Usually this is expressed by let with the objective: "Let us go." And the same with the third person: "Let him be accursed."
Exercises on the Moods.
(a) Tell the mood of each verb in these sentences, and what special use it is of that mood:—
1. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart and her prayers be.
2.
Mark thou this difference, child of earth!
While each performs his part,
Not all the lip can speak is worth
The silence of the heart.
3. Oh, that I might be admitted to thy presence! that mine were the supreme delight of knowing thy will!
4.
'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life,
One glance at their array!
5. Whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is to be preferred before justice.
6.
The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve
And use it for an anvil till he had filled
The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts.
7.
Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
8.
Quoth she, "The Devil take the goose,
And God forget the stranger!"
9. Think not that I speak for your sakes.
10. "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.
11. Were that a just return? Were that Roman magnanimity?
12. Well; how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the world has taken the pains to think of.
13. He is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and prosperities he like, no literary man.
14. Could we one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant points compose!
15. "Oh, then, my dear madam," cried he, "tell me where I may find my poor, ruined, but repentant child."
16.
That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound,
Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt,
Thou bring it to be blessed where saints and angels haunt?
17.
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
18.
He, as though an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him.
19.
From the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odor through the brain,
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
20. That a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic is the triumph and true work of what intellect he has; alas! this is as if you should overturn the tree.
21.
The fat earth feed thy branchy root
That under deeply strikes!
The northern morning o'er thee shoot,
High up in silver spikes!
22. Though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal cause.
23. God send Rome one such other sight!
24. "Mr. Marshall," continued Old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the United States to the prisoner."
25. If there is only one woman in the nation who claims the right to vote, she ought to have it.
26. Though he were dumb, it would speak.
27. Meantime, whatever she did,—whether it were in display of her own matchless talents, or whether it were as one member of a general party,—nothing could exceed the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs. Siddons.
28. It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence whether there be a man behind it or no.
(b) Find sentences with five verbs in the indicative mood, five in the subjunctive, five in the imperative.